


hurt me like your rag dolls

by adozencaptains



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Cheating, F/F, Want as a Concept, blink and you'll miss Asexual Kara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adozencaptains/pseuds/adozencaptains
Summary: "You know for the longest time,” Kara says, wetting her lips, “I thought we'd be inevitable.”"Kara," Alex says quietly, suddenly terrified at the thought of both hearing what Kara has to say and never hearing Kara say it at all."I just - I thought you'd like me forever. I thought -" Kara laughs ruefully, so small and unsure, and she shrugs when Alex meets her gaze. There are unexpected tears in Alex’s eyes. "I guess I just thought you'd wait for me."





	hurt me like your rag dolls

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed

Kara thought she knew _hurt_.

As a girl, she lost her family, her culture, her entire planet with a kiss to her forehead and a press of a button. In a blink of an eye, her pod left Krypton, her mother crying quietly from the loading dock the last memory Kara has of her. She spends more than two decades floating through the Phantom Zone, a listless existence where time ceased to be and the only company she kept were the memories she was desperate to never forget. How fickle time is, she learns only when she lands on a planet called Earth and realizes Kal is no longer _Kal_ , per se. He goes by Clark.

As a teenager on a foreign planet with strangers to guide her and the only living family member she has left nearly halfway across the world, Kara learns what it means to be isolated, scared, forgotten. Hurt becomes redefined to include the terrible experiences that encompass her first few years on Earth - having powers she can’t control, being forced to keep her identity and former life a secret, being mocked and ridiculed for not understanding, not fitting in, not being human. It’s a different kind of hurt, and it sizzles like burning paper, warming the constant ache that her planet’s destruction had left behind. But she manages, learns to cope with hurt as most humans seem to do.

She watched as people around her did completely mundane human things and she was in awe. People moved and got jobs and degrees, they fell in love and broke up, got married and had children, visited family and made memories. All the while, Kara watched as the humans did these incredible things, and she nurtured the hurt inside, taking comfort from these strangers and their happiness.

Never did she want for herself. It was enough to just be, to witness miracles and be witness to life. She owed her people that much. For a while, it was enough. Kara could watch with silent eyes and open ears, live through lives she’s never lived, love people she’s never met, cry with those she wishes she could hold. She could be an observer because Kal - _Superman_ was their hero, and he didn’t need her to watch him. The humans didn’t either, but maybe they wouldn’t mind if she did, if the little comfort she took in her life actually came from their own. It was enough, it was enough, it was _enough_.

Until one day, it wasn’t.

And Kara learns what it means to _want_.

In the process, she redefines what it means to _hurt_.

If time is fickle, then want is but a second in the life of the universe. It comes and goes easier than the easterly wind that Kara likes to sit in while she basks in the morning sun. She witnesses how humans want - their toys and technology, their things and their possessions. They want safety and happiness and to love and be loved. She sees how want manifests into physicality, and how it, too, has a language all its own that Kara is slow to understand. She studies its _consumers_ , and from one to the next, it travels without regret or remorse. It simply is.

She doesn’t understand it, but she’s also not bothered by her confusion. Of all the things she learns on Earth, at least half of what is presented to her is somewhat beyond her grasp, and at least half of that she doesn’t intend to learn more about. But this… _want_ , Kara doesn’t know what to do with it. How to study it more than she has, how to learn about it and from it, understand its causes and consequences.

But, if there is one thing Kara has learned from Earth, of which she’s learned a vast many of things, then it is this - everything starts and ends with Alex Danvers.

~*~

In the dark and dank corner of the bar, Kara watches with bright eyes as Alex plays pool. She’s good, but Kara doesn’t remember where or when or how she learned. It could be one of the infinitely many things Alex is naturally good at, with her keen eyes and stubborn determination. There is hardly anything Kara thinks Alex couldn’t conquer should she absolutely want to.

“Another drink, Kara?” James lifts his empty glass as he stands to get her attention.

“Sure. Thanks, James.”

James smiles at her, his handsome smile, and nudges Winn. “Want another, man?”

“Um, yeah, sure. But one of you is either driving or flying me home,” Winn says decisively. His hair is askew and half of his collared shirt is upturned. He’s drunk, if not excessively tipsy. “Actually, I didn’t even drive here so I don’t know why I said that.”

Snorting, James pats him on the back. He directs his attention to the pool table. “Alex, Maggie, you guys want another?”

Kara watches Alex sink the six ball in the corner pocket, an easy shot that hardly required her to even use her bridge hand, and when she comes up from her stance, she glances at Maggie. “I will, thanks, James. Whiskey sour, please.”

Maggie waves her empty beer bottle, half-saluting James when he nods, and he rouses Winn from his somewhat drunken daze to help carry the drinks back to the table. Kara should offer to help as well, but there’s four hands between them and they should be able to handle it. 

“Kara, want to play?” Maggie asks her, and her sudden appearance beside the table makes the hair on the back of Kara’s neck prickle.

Adjusting her glasses, Kara laughs, waving her off. “No thank you. I’m not very good with the whole hand-eye coordination.”

“Yeah, sports have never been Kara’s thing. Unless you count debate or the scholastic decathlon,” Alex snickers, leaning against the table.

“You know we most certainly do, Alex Danvers,” Kara says, scrunching her nose.

“Well I’m sure Alex can teach you. She’s been whooping my ass since I picked up this stick. Maybe you’ll have better luck,” Maggie says, holding out her pool stick as she digs her phone out from her pocket. “I’ve got to take this anyway. I’ll be back.”

Kara watches Maggie go until Alex is in front of her, smirking with her half-crooked smirk. “This is a game of _delicate_ touch, Kara. Try not to kill anyone with a pool ball tonight.”

“If I do, it’s gonna be you,” Kara grumbles. She stands and half-heartedly pushes Alex to the pool table. “Start teaching.”

Alex is mid-lesson about the rules of the white ball when James drops off their drinks, but Kara finds herself watching Alex more than listening to her instruction. She’s had one drink because she has to work in the morning, but her cheeks are still flushed and she’s talking a lot with her hands. That usually means she’s having a good time, and that makes Kara swell with happiness.

“Are you even listening?” Alex huffs when she realizes Kara’s attention certainly had drifted.

“Nope,” Kara admits with a sheepish smile. She sucks down half her drink in one go. “You look pretty.”

There’s a stutter in Alex’s heartbeat as her smile widens, and no one would have noticed if they weren’t looking for it, which Kara was. “Thanks. You don’t think I’m trying too hard?”

“Never,” Kara says, her smile fond and eyes soft. She looks back to the table, where James and Winn have their attention otherwise occupied by something on Winn’s phone, and she concentrates on Maggie’s voice outside the bar, still on the phone. “You always look pretty.”

Alex’s brows furrow slightly at the unexpected compliment, but she takes it in stride, a teasing lilt to her voice when she hums, “Oh, I know.”

Grabbing the cue ball from the table, Alex sets her position at the far end of the table and breaks the rack with a vicious crack. Balls speed across the table, and Kara counts at least one stripe and two solids making their way into pockets. It’s impressive, and Alex looks gleeful at the layout she left herself.

“Aren’t you supposed to let me win?” Kara asks when Alex swoops down into her stance. “Or at least pretend to let me win?”

“Nope,” Alex grins over her stick at her. She aims for the yellow striped ball - the nine, Kara thinks, and the ball sinks effortlessly into the middle pocket on the other side of the table. “You’re solids.”

Kara pumps her fist. “I’ve already got two balls in.”

“But I’ve got an easier layout for stripes. Watch and learn.” Alex makes three more balls before she misses on the orange striped ball that Kara can’t see the number on. “Try not to break anything.”

Kara hits the white ball - _cue ball, Kara, that’s what it’s called_ \- so softly that it doesn’t even make contact with her ball of choice, the solid purple one. 

Alex claps her hands. “So that’s a foul, since you didn’t make contact with your ball and then hit a rail, which would mean it’s my turn. But, since you didn’t break anything, I’ll let you go again. Hit it a little harder. A _little_ , Kara. Like, super super light, but, you know, actually hit the ball.”

This time when Kara’s stick hits the cue ball, it does make contact with the purple ball, but then the purple ball flies off the table across the bar, and Alex rolls her eyes and jogs after it. She returns, ball in hand, and places the ball, which Kara can see is the four ball, on the table in roughly the same spot it was in before Kara tried to pelt it across the universe.

“Let’s try again. Set your bridge hand up and just hold the stick, and I’m going to guide it so you know the pressure you need. Okay?”

Kara nods, falls into position the same way Alex does because it seems to work for her and she’s very good at it, so why not? Alex stands next to her, off to the side so she can see the four ball and Kara’s stance. When she grabs the end of the stick, Kara tries to focus on her hand, the pulse beating through her thumb, the sound of her fingers grasping the wood, to fully gauge the right pressure needed to hit the ball, but she can’t.

The sound of resin smacking resin with a soft bump brings Kara back just in time to see the four ball sail into Alex’s pocket of choice. Alex is grinning at her, evidently proud of their teamwork, but Kara’s blank stare tells her more than enough.

“You totally missed it, didn’t you? Okay, we’ll try again. Let me grab that ball and set it up the same way,” Alex says, and she walks around the table to the pocket the four ball dropped into.

"You know for the longest time,” Kara says, wetting her lips, “I thought we'd be inevitable.”

Her voice is somewhat wistful, somewhat sad, and it stops Alex in her tracks. Kara can see the way her entire body freezes up, can hear the harsh swallow she forces her throat to take part in. There’s a internal battle of sorts Kara can see in Alex’s head, and then her sister turns, so very slowly back to face her. The table lays between them like years of silence that followed them both to this moment. 

"Kara," Alex says quietly, suddenly terrified at the thought of both hearing what Kara has to say and never hearing Kara say it at all.

"I just - I thought you'd like me forever. I thought -" Kara laughs ruefully, so small and unsure, and she shrugs when Alex meets her gaze. There are unexpected tears in Alex’s eyes. "I guess I just thought you'd wait for me."

 _Wait for me_. Alex's stomach lurches. "Kara," she starts, swallowing harshly, "I'm with Maggie."

Now, Kara wants to add. Alex wasn’t with her three weeks ago. "I know, I know," Kara laughs again and adjusts her glasses.

Alex drops the four ball on the table, gripping the edge of it to steady herself. She can’t force herself to look away from Kara. “Why didn’t you…”

There are a million things Alex could say, Kara knows that. Why didn’t she tell her, why didn’t she tell her _before_ she was with Maggie, why didn’t she bring it up when they were alone and not in a crowded bar with their friends and Alex’s _girlfriend_? She could beg Kara for an answer, and Kara wouldn’t know what to tell her. Sometimes, it just simply is.

Kara bites her lip. She can hear Maggie finishing up her conversation outside. She won’t have much time left. "I just - I don't know. I didn't think it would happen like this."

Inhaling sharply, Alex blinks away the tears that have stubbornly clung to her eyelashes. “What do you mean?”

Kara shrugs helplessly. She doesn’t know how to explain it, and the person she would usually ask for help with those words is currently asking _her_ for them.

Alex crosses back to Kara’s side of the table, and the lack of space between them seems to magnifies all of their emotions in a single second. Alex is looking at her with such confusion that Kara wants to fly out of the bar and cry herself to sleep in the middle of some frozen forgotten tundra. Someplace so cold she wouldn’t be able to feel the warmth that Alex makes her feel.

“What do you mean you didn’t think it would happen like this, Kara?” Alex asks, almost pleading as her eyes search Kara’s face for any hint toward her meaning. “Please. Tell me.”

“I - I can’t. You’re with Maggie,” Kara offers weakly. Her heart thumps painfully against her ribcage when Alex grabs her wrist. “Alex.”

“Tell me. Please, Kara. What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean.”

“You’re lying,” Alex tells her hoarsely. Her eyes glitter in the bar’s yellow lighting, and Kara has the odd thought that Alex was always a pretty crier, if there was ever such a thing. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I don’t know,” Kara says, but she does, she really does.

How long has she watched the humans and seen the various degrees of _want_ play out in their lives? How closely intertwined with _hurt_ had it been in almost every one? Did one cause the other or were they simply so integral to the other’s creation that one could not exist without the other? How often had Kara hurt, only to want what wasn’t available?

It wasn’t fair to bring this up now, Kara knew that. All the sacrifices Alex had made in her life for her, and Kara was just about ready to wreck the one thing Alex had claimed for herself, the one little slice of happiness she risked to keep. Why couldn’t Kara gleam the satisfaction from her happiness that she did every other human? What was so different that instead of comfort it brewed confusion and a gloomy despair?

And Kara knew, in that moment, with Alex begging her for answers, what she could never tell her.

That it was different because whereas other people and their happiness were unrelated to her, Kara _wanted_ Alex’s happiness to be because of her. 

“I’m sorry,” Kara whispers instead, and she leaves her pool stick on the table. It hurts to walk away from Alex when she looks at her like that, but she needs to do it for the both of them, wants be damned.

James and Winn are laughing loudly, rowdy with wide grins and flushed faces, when she approaches them. She lies and feigns an emergency, a Supergirl emergency at that, to get out of the rest of the night. They’re understanding, as always, and Kara doesn’t look back at Alex when she leaves the bar and takes off into the middle of the night.

Inevitable isn’t a word that crosses her mind often, but it’s all Kara can think of in relation to Alex. As she soars through the clouds, mindless and distracted, her heart hums with the strength of it. She doesn’t believe in things like fate and destiny, but if she did, she thinks that this might be the epitome of it all.

Kara tries to find an emergency to make her exit worth it, but when none appear, she curses National City’s worst for leaving her to her thoughts and empty apartment. She flies through the open living room window, thinks about showering, but doesn’t make it further than the couch. The cushions mush around her face when she collapses on it, grunting as she shifts to get comfortable. 

An incessant knocking on her door startles Kara awake from her light dozing, but she doesn’t need x-ray vision to see what’s beyond her door when such a familiar heartbeat greets her ears. She’s slow to answer, but when the knocking becomes pounding and Alex threatens under her breath to blow the door up, Kara zooms over and rips the door open. She has no doubt Alex would blow her door up if she felt the need.

“Alex -” Kara starts, but she’s cut off as her sister pokes a finger into her chest, a scowl on her face as she forces her back into the apartment.

“You don’t get to run off like that, to fly away right after you say stuff like that,” Alex says in a rush, her eyes puffy and her voice hoarse - like she had been crying on the drive over. “That’s not _fair_.”

“I’m sorry,” Kara says, biting her lip hard when she thinks about it. How unfair it was to even bring the topic up at all. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Alex shuts the door behind her. “No, you shouldn't have. But you did. And now…”

“Now what?”

“Now I need to know _why_ , Kara. Please. You owe me that at least. I can’t -” Alex cuts herself off with a deep breath, running a hand through her hair to gather her bearings. Kara waits. “I waited for fourteen years, and now - you say something _now_. I just… I don’t know. I need to know why. Please.”

Alex’s face is pleading, and Kara suddenly wishes she had never said anything at all because what good can come of this? How does it help anyone that Alex knows? Is it selfish of Kara to tell Alex just so she doesn’t have to carry the burden of this secret alone, so Alex can help lift the weight of it like she has with everything else in Kara’s life?

“I didn’t know what it was - what it _is_ ,” Kara says slowly, and she raises her eyes to meet Alex’s wide brown gaze, full of fear and anticipation and something else, “but whatever it is, I know now it’s for you, Alex.”

A sob leaves Alex’s mouth before she can contain it, and then Kara’s arms are around her, grounding her, as she clutches at Kara’s sweater, the weight of Kara’s words making her legs weak and her tears heavier. How long she’s waited to hear those words, how she’s played out various scenarios in her head of Kara finally reciprocating what Alex herself thought to be nothing more than a fanciful crush.

“I’m sorry, Alex. I’m too late,” Kara says against the side of her head, and her lips press softly to Alex’s hair as Kara breathes her in. “I’m so sorry.”

“I w-would’ve waited,” Alex curls her fingers into Kara’s sweater, so tightly she has half a mind to think it might tear, “if I _knew_. God, Kara. I thought you would never -”

“Tell you?”

“ _Love_ me,” Alex croaks, and the comfortable place her face had found between Kara’s shoulder and neck is suddenly gone as Kara cups her face, tear tracks and ruined make-up and all.

“I have and will always love you,” Kara says firmly, silently pouring all of her energy into making Alex believe her. 

Alex’s whole body trembles, and she closes her eyes as more tears leave her eyes. Her mascara is definitely ruined by now.

“I just didn’t know that what I was feeling. There was so much, and I didn’t know,” Kara finishes in a quieter voice. “I wish I knew sooner.”

Alex is almost too afraid to ask, but she may never have another chance. “What… are you feeling?”

Kara wets her lips. “I want you.”

A sharp inhalation and Alex still can’t breathe. Her breath catches in her lungs as her chest constricts painfully, and Alex can’t look, she can’t, she can’t, because Kara said - she _finally_ said -

“I didn’t think I was allowed to,” Kara admits softly, and the weight of all the hurt she has ever felt weighs heavily on her shoulders, soaking into her touch, her words.

“You can… you can do whatever you want to, Kara,” Alex tells her. When she grasps at Kara’s wrists, to feel the pulse warm beneath her skin, she feels brave and opens her eyes. She must look terrible, but Kara’s gaze is unwavering. “You’re allowed to want things, Kara. It’s not just for humans.”

“I want… I want,” Kara murmurs, and her gaze drops, “I want to kiss you.”

The air Alex’s lungs refused before rushes in suddenly just to leave her as fast. “ _Kara_ …”

“I’m going to… kiss you.” Kara’s face is infinitely closer, her breath ghosting across Alex’s lips. “Can I?”

Alex’s lips are dry, and when her tongue sneaks out to wet them, she can swear it touches Kara’s lips. “Whatever you want.”

“What do you want?”

“I - I want you to be selfish for once. I want you to want what you want, Kara, because I -”

“I want you,” Kara says, and then she kisses her.

In a lifetime of hurt, Kara has not let herself want many things.The impossibility of the universe is daunting, and she knows best how cruel its many twists and turns can be. But had she known how kissing Alex felt, how the flutter of her heart when their lips met resounded in their kiss, how it felt like being _home_ , then Kara would’ve let herself want and want and want.

Alex’s mouth is warm, soft, and yields to the gentle pressure of Kara’s lips as easily as if they had done this many times before. Kara’s thumb brush against Alex’s cheeks, and when Alex shudders and presses their lips together harder, Kara lets her. Alex’s hands find their way into her hair, and Kara is against the wall with Alex’s body flush against her. 

“I would’ve waited for you,” Alex whispers mournfully into her next kiss, surprising Kara when she introduces her teeth into the mix. “All you had to do was ask.”

“I didn’t know how,” Kara says honestly. She lets Alex pull her arms around body, balancing their combined weight to be as close as they can be. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

Kara stops Alex with a small squeeze to her waist, nudging her nose against Alex’s. “I have to. Because I don’t think I’m ever going to stop wanting you. Now that I know that’s what it is.”

Alex shivers when Kara brushes a delicate kiss against her lips. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“Good. Because I don’t think I would know how.”

The very idea _hurts_ , so Kara doesn’t try. For once, she lets herself want and want and want.

**Author's Note:**

> adozencaptains @ tumblr


End file.
